Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

BenMcLean

@Clyde said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

I strongly doubt that this would hold up in court

Only because of the "Golden Rule"

themazingness

@Clyde Wow, I tried reinstalling the games to read the EULAs a bit, and I'm surprised what I found.

Atari Vault says you can't play it on unauthorized devices. It's one I thought would be perfectly fine since the console ROMs are freely installed on your computer. But then I wonder "well, I'm not installing Atari Vault on another device, I'm just using the ROMs on one." (Not a rationalization so much as wondering how courts would look at that differentiation). Still, surprised it actually had a strict EULA.

Taito Legends 2 was equally strict yet ambiguous whether or not you could use the ROMs elsewhere even though they are installed on the drive as is. It did prohibit decompiling, etc. (though extraction is unnecessary so it's a moot point regarding the ROMs). It allowed for backups but said the backups had to be for archival use or the same use granted in the rest of the license.

Nothing else really had a EULA at installation or in the files (and I have tons of collections like these). Most of them were games you had to extract from rather than the ROMs being included (the Sega Mega Drive and Genesis Classic Collection had no EULA either though).

Clyde

@themazingness Interesting, thanks for sharing your finds.

BenMcLean

@themazingness said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

Atari Vault says you can't play it on unauthorized devices.

Authorized by whom?

themazingness

@BenMcLean Hmm... I tried but I can't get the EULA to show up again by uninstalling and reinstalling. Presumably Atari.

I feel like EULAs should be required by law to be a text file for computer licenses. It shouldn't need to rely on arbitrary installation conditions to access them.

themazingness

https://store.steampowered.com//eula/400020_eula_0

You can read for yourself. They're also easier to find than I realized. There is a EULA for every game on Steam as far as I can tell. They're on their store page on the right hand side after the list of features. So my previous post about the games not having EULAs at installation can be true sometimes (there seems to be an algorithm there to detect if you have accepted it recently). But they all seem to be on the store page.

Clyde

Fun fact: According to the German Wikipedia, in Austria and Germany, any EULA that isn't presented to the buyer before the purchase is legally void. This even applies if the user is forced to agree to it afterwards to be able to install the software.

Furthermore, even a correctly presented EULA may be partially ineffective if it violates the laws on AGB (Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen, General Terms and Conditions of Business).

themazingness

Because of the Halloween Steam sale, I was able to confirm some more Piko Interactive games that have SNES ROMs available by simply renaming (and adding a .sfc file extension) the game file in the res folder (as described in my post about Piko Interactive, a few posts above this one).

Dorke and Ymp
Gourmet Warriors
Iron Commando
Legend
Jim Power

Note that Jim Power has 2 versions of the ROM, the original and an enhanced version (in two separate folders within the res folder).

Also, no EULA on these :)

themazingness

I can confirm Dragonview works with the above method as well (rename "game" to a .sfc) and has no EULA.

Dan1300

Don't know if anyone said this but archive site has a ton for you to use for free as long as it isn't commercially.

I have been using Google and using search criteria: internet archive <system name> ROMs and I currently have about 15 different sites ranging from Atari to PSX.

Enjoy and have fun!

mitu

@dan1300 Please, no links to ROM sites. The archive site has a special DMCA exemption for the US, but it's not a legal avenue to get ROMs/games.

thelostsoul

@mitu I was always wondering why the links to archive site are allowed (across the board on other communities as well). The site contains illegal hosted ROMs.

mitu

@thelostsoul said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

The site contains illegal hosted ROMs.

The site doesn't hosts the ROM illegaly, their usage is however not under the same terms.

thelostsoul

@mitu I'm just trying to understand what the difference between this archive page and a website who offers ROMs for download is. What if I create an archive website and offer the download links, just as the archive site, but do not allow them to download. Because the terms do not allow this. So, whats going on here that the DMCA allows this? And BTW its only for the US, so shouldn't this be only accessible from the US in that case? I am just confused about how this stuff works from legal perspective.

Clyde

@thelostsoul AFAIK, The Internet Archive was recognized as a public library and thus, got a exemption from copyright laws by the DMCA. So I would concur with @mitu that their hosting of retro software seems to be legal, but since a) this doesn't allow the use of that software by everyone, and b) even if so, it would only be legal in the US, and linking to it may cause problems for websites in other countries, e.g. retropie.org.uk.

Some links about the matter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive#Software
https://archive.org/about/dmca.php
https://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/librarian_statement_01.html (mainly #2 and #3 of the penultimate paragraph.)

Cognate subject: this year's lawsuit by some book publishers

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/23/21293875/internet-archive-website-lawsuit-open-library-wayback-machine-controversy-copyright

edit: I wonder if and how DMCA permissions may apply to foreign countries the US have copyright treaties with, like the WIPO Copyright Treaty, but here my motivations to dive deeper into the matter subside without further importance to my own activities.

thelostsoul

@clyde My issue with understanding the subject is that everyone can upload and distribute anything they want, like in YouTube. It is not a closed management like in a physical library or any controlled library environment.

and b) even if so, it would only be legal in the US, and linking to it may cause problems for websites in other countries, e.g. retropie.org.uk.

This is exactly one of the things I am referring to. Every website and community seem to tolerate the site, even though it contains illegal hosted ROMs for outside of the US. Note: I am not trying to make problems here. I feel like the need to say that. What if a game company (or anyone else) owning the trademark and copyright of a software that is sold outside of the US, such as other versions from Japan or Germany do not want its software distributed via archive site? These properties never came out in the US and do not fall under the copyrights of US.

Clyde

@mitu I saw that you removed the site's adress from the original post. My follow up also contains a link to it, if only to their statement about the DMCA status. Although I think that this link should cause no problems and is helpful in this discussion, I leave it to you to remove it if you think otherwise. 😇

Clyde

@thelostsoul (I think) I understand your point, and I sometimes wonder myself why none of the big players known for suing rom sites (looking at you, Nintendo) didn't take legal action against the Archive yet.

After all, a similar thing happened to Project Gutenberg, which started to block any access from German IPs after an order from a German court. Users with German IPs only see this:

Your IP address has been automatically blocked from accessing the Project Gutenberg website, www.gutenberg.org. This is because the geoIP database shows your address is in the country of Germany
[...]
A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany. Project Gutenberg believes the Court has no jurisdiction over the matter, but until the issue is resolved, it will comply.

Mind the last sentence, though. They did it mainly as a precaution, maybe the Archive has just more ~~balls~~ confidence in their legal foothold.

Folly

@clyde said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

@thelostsoul (I think) I understand your point, and I sometimes wonder myself why none of the big players known for suing rom sites (looking at you, Nintendo) didn't take legal action against the Archive yet.

I think everyone will benefit.
That's why the big players are not suing.

I think, these are the reasons :

It will take a lot of commitment/money of the big player to archive everything they have.
In business it always about reducing costs so it's nice someone else does the archiving.
Keeping it safe for generations to come.
If you would like to earn money from your old games, you wouldn't earn the money you have to earn to make in profitable.
Nowadays more and more people are needed in the branche, this way people can look back and learn from it.
When they learned enough they will become the new developpers
It's good advertising : Oh WOW. The did that in the past, I want to have the new stuff from that brand. Or I want to work for them.
As a company you can make use of the open community (marketing, development, open source, programming, etc)
Suing does cost a lot of money and efford.
What will you gain after suing ?
Some "players" don't even exist anymore. If it wasn't archived, all the stuff was gone forever.

mitu

@thelostsoul said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

What if a game company (or anyone else) owning the trademark and copyright of a software that is sold outside of the US, such as other versions from Japan or Germany do not want its software distributed via archive site?

They can request the removal of the content. See: